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The Sealydale 

(and other hybrids)

Sealydale Terrier.  Hubbard, 1945.

   This hybrid, bred by Miss M. Bodmer of Grahamstown, South Africa was a cross between two types of terrier, the Airedale and the Sealyham.  Looking like a slightly heavier built Jack Russell, this dog bred true to type in a very short time and naturally inherited the weatherproof coat of both it's parent breeds.  Up until the 1940s this breed was still in demand as a vermin destroyer.

  So-called designer dogs, or poo dogs to use their alternative name, are popular these days but the general idea is hundreds of years old.  In the past dogs were workers and the modern concept of a ‘breed’ was largely unknown.  Different types were hybridised in an attempt to improve working ability.  Whereas these days some breeders appear to think up a catchy portmanteau first for their ‘mix’ and then choose the appropriate breeds.  Strangely, the new hybrids are never called ‘water rugs' or ‘sink tidies’.  There’s nothing wrong with hybrids, in fact there is a school of thought that they're healthier than inbred, purebred dogs: heterozygosity being preferable to homozygosity.  In 1995 author and dog breeder D. Brian Plummer said: "the reader should not decry that particular quality known as hybrid vigour, for a first cross between two similar breeds would produce a crossbred which was lustier, gamer, healthier and usually longer lived than either of its pure-bred parents."  

   Some ‘designer dogs’ in the past vanished into obscurity, others were subsumed into existing ‘breed-types’ of the time and many modern breeds, of course, began as hybrids and, in some cases, their name gives it away.  The original name for the bull terrier was ‘bull and terrier’; terriers were outcrossed to bulldogs for generations before dog shows came into vogue.  In America the bull and terrier hybrids were developed into the Boston terrier and, in a roundabout way, the AmStaff.  Something similar happened to the bullmastiff.  For centuries large hybrids known as keepers’ night dogs were bred, usually from mastiffs, bulldogs or occasionally other large breeds, to protect gamekeepers from violent poachers.  The dogs were fitted with heavy metal muzzles, which they were trained to use like a battering ram to knock out and incapacitate the poachers.  The same, or similar, hybrids were used in the countryside to guard dwellings and were known as great country curs.  Sometimes mastiffs or mastiff hybrids were constrained by a chain and were known as bandogs or tie-dogs.  At the turn of the twentieth century it became more and more common to standardise these large hybrids into a breed that became known as the bullmastiff, which was supposedly 60 per cent mastiff to forty per cent bulldog.  Although cynics accused the breeders of misrepresentation by selling the taller puppies and saplings as mastiffs whilst passing off smaller litter-mates as bullmastiffs.  In the 1920s the Kennel Club committee made the distinction between the bullmastiff (pure-bred) and the bullmastiff (cross-bred) by saying “the former being a dog bred with both parents and the preceding three generations all bullmastiffs, without the introduction of a mastiff or bulldog.”

   The Plummer terrier is a judicious blend of Jack Russell terrier and fell terrier with two distinctive outcrosses, one to a pit-fighting dog and the other to a small beagle.  Oddly enough a few hundred years ago anyone desiring to breed their own terriers from scratch was advised to mate mongrel mastiffs to beagles.  Yet other advice suggests crossing ‘fighting biting curs’ with beagles to get terriers: the resultant offspring not being dubbed ‘beastiffs’ or ‘curgles’ but terriers.

    Before the railways and canals any areas not near to the coast or a navigable river were essentially isolated.  Different hunt countries required different dogs and this tended to result in a wide variation even within accepted breed-types.  In these circumstances, when it was expedient to do so, huntsmen and stockmen would outcross without hesitation to the best dogs available.   The modern harrier is descended from an amazing hotchpotch of British and French hunting breeds with markedly different characteristics.  The way to breed the ideal hare-hunting dog was easy enough: you simply found a variety of large, slow harrier and crossed it with a fox-beagle (a particularly speedy type of hare hound), which were themselves hybrids between dwarf foxhounds and beagles.  The dwarf foxhounds were dogs deemed too small to run on an even footing with the full-sized foxhounds; they probably turned up in foxhound litters because the pack had received an infusion of 'harrier' blood at some point in the past.  Needless to say with all these introductions the conformity of the pack, so strived for by hunters, went out the window and it would take several generations of discards to draft, or even severe culling, before any uniformity could be achieved, at least until the next outcross.   Harriers were also used in the pursuit of the otter.  Whereas there have always been otterhounds, probably descended from the Bresse hound, we are told anyone with no otterhounds to hand could easily breed their own simply by crossing a harrier with a wire-haired terrier.  The opposite cross, otterhound x terrier, supposedly the bull terrier in this instance, eventually produced the Airedale terrier.

   On its introduction into England in the nineteenth century the basset Artesian-Normand was experimentally crossed with the beagle in an attempt to increase the available bloodlines.  Unfortunately bassets and beagles are different dogs and breeders felt they were losing the distinctive basset head profile and the beagle matings were discontinued.  Bassets were outcrossed to bloodhounds instead and this breeding regime was deemed more successful.  This is one reason why the modern basset hound is essentially a dwarf bloodhound.  More recently, as the basset hound appeared to be trending towards ridiculously short legs, hunters outcrossed to the modern harrier.  At the turn of the 21st century one basset hound pack was about twenty-five per cent harrier: these basset x harrier hybrids are called English bassets.  Recently some working basset hound owners are re-examining the beagle cross.  Some English basset packs aim for a chest clearance of at least five inches off the ground; thus increasing the dichotomy between the hunting basset hound and the ‘show’ basset hound.

   A kibble hound was a cross between a beagle and an old English hound.  The idea behind this cross was to achieve a medium-sized hunting dog that was faster and smaller than the slow moving old English hound.

   Two roughly similar crossbreeds were the teaser and the vaultre.  The teaser, a greyhound x scent hound, was employed to flush deer into the path of coursing greyhounds.  The vaultre could be the offspring of a mastiff crossed with either a large scent hound or greyhound.  This hybrid was used for hunting bear and boar. Cotgrave claims this type was, in size, somewhere between the alaunt and the great country cur, while according to Chaucer the alaunt was as big as a steer.  So we have here a sizable type of manufactured hunting dog that topped the scales somewhere ‘twixt the mastiff and the bullock.  A similar but, one would expect, smaller, dog to the latter was the fox-cur.  This hybrid, presumably foxhound (or rache) by cur, was known for its yelping according to Sir Hildebrande de Brute writing in the fifteenth century ‘Malvern Chase’. It was used for flushing wild boar, vermin killing and could also be engaged in a spot of hare hunting.  Information on old breed-types can be lost in the mists of time: what should we make of this comment by Edward, II Duke of York "mastiffs that men call curs and their nature, and then of small curs that come to be terriers and their nature..." Edward, who knew a thing or two about hunting, said this in 1413 and there is a possibility that the fox-cur was actually a foxhound x mongrel mastiff. 

  The gundog world also had its hybrids: droppers were a first cross between setters and pointers, a cross that never became overly popular.  The field spaniel was very nearly ruined by reckless outcrossing to the basset hound.  The reasoning was sound enough, basset hounds are heavy and low to ground with a body shape that lends itself to forcing a way through dense undergrowth but the cross damaged the field spaniel’s ability as a working retriever.  Field spaniels were required to be heavy and low to ground and were originally produced from crosses between the Sussex spaniel and the cocker spaniel but some exhibitors took the idea to extremes (as always) and the breed received the unfortunate nickname of 'caterpillars', Vesey-Fitzgerald, 1957.

  Sighthounds also have their hybrids, just no catchy portmanteaux.  Lurchers (sighthound x non-sighthound) and longdogs (sighthounds x sighthounds) have been bred for centuries in the UK.  Although lurchers and longdogs can run to several generations there may be so much variability in the lurcher’s f2, f3 generations etc. that most people prefer the first cross, maybe straight greyhound/collie or greyhound/Bedlington terrier.  The British penchant for sighthound hybrids was also exported to the colonies.  The American staghound is a sighthound composite based mainly on the greyhound and deerhound but with an admixture of other large breeds like the borzoi, foxhound and Irish wolfhound.  Australia had two longdogs, one, the kangaroo hound was a meld of greyhound, deerhound and Irish wolfhound.  The other Australian longdog, the Strathdoon dingo-killer, was a straight cross between the borzoi and deerhound.  There is very little evidence that this latter hybrid was ever bred to an f2 generation and so on, except for allegations in the early twentieth century in the Australian dog show world that some deerhounds displayed the occasional borzoi characteristic.  One supposes that a cross between a deerhound and a borzoi might be called a ‘beerhound’ in Oz but maybe a name like ‘Strathdoon dingo-killer’ sounded just too cool to challenge.

   Also in Australia imported blue merle sheepdogs were crossed with dingos.  This was done in an attempt to obtain dogs that could tend the herds in stifling heat.  The produce of this cross, originally known as Halls heelers, eventually received a small amount of ‘blood’ from other breeds and finally became known as Australian cattle dogs.  Somewhere along the way they lost the merle colouration but picked up a ‘ticking’ gene, possibly from a Dalmatian cross.  About this time in the UK, 1899, Lord Lonsdale outcrossed the remnants of the Cumberland sheepdog with German shepherd dogs in an ultimately failed attempt to save the breed.  Many unique British sheepdog breeds were steamrollered by the ongoing success and popularity of the border collie, there was even an attempt to save the Welsh black and tan sheepdog by outcrossing to the New Zealand huntaway but sadly it was all to no avail.

   Modern working breeds have been developed too.  The labradoodle was initially bred from Labradors and standard poodles to create guide dogs for blind people with fur allergies.   Perhaps the most recent manufactured working dog is the shalaika or Sulimov dog.  These airport sniffer dogs are designed to have the cold tolerance of the Lapponian herder and the keen ‘nose’ of the golden jackal (Canis aureus).  The ‘breed’ has since been bred to several generations in Russia but there is still considerable variability.

   Hybrid companion dogs, too, have been developed.  Possibly the most famous of these are the dorgies bred by Her Majesty The Queen.  In 1971 Princess Margaret’s miniature long-haired dachshund male, Pipkin, ‘got at’ the Queen’s corgi bitch, Tiny.  The seven hybrid puppies produced were so attractive and appealing that over the years The Queen has repeated the cross on several occasions.  Two other companion dog hybrids stand out, these are the king shepherd and the Shiloh shepherd.  The Shiloh variety was bred from GSDs and malamutes with the intention of producing a larger, gentler, less ‘sharp’ breed than the German shepherd.  The king shepherd, however, should be like a large German shepherd dog temperament-wise and in every other respect.  Over the years, to increase size, king shepherds were occasionally outcrossed to other large breeds, typically malamute, Great Pyrenees and Japanese Akita.

  Mystifyingly, there have been numerous attempts to hybridise dogs with wolves over the years (Shakespeare’s demi-wolf).  Just what the breeders are hoping to achieve is somewhat baffling as wolves, even when domesticated from an early age, are intractable and shy and unfortunately these traits are evinced in the first cross and sometimes even in subsequent generations.

  It could be said that we’ve come full circle.  Where once we used to think nothing of hybridising in the interests of performance and ability, nowadays, after about a century and a half of the, rather blinkered, eugenics of purebred dog breeding, we’re back to hybridising to produce scores, or possibly hundreds, of varieties of designer dogs.  It’s something of a novelty at the moment but as long as the situation doesn’t get out of hand or abused then the fashion may actually benefit Canis familiaris in the long run.

--- Explore further ---

The Observer's book of Dogs, 1945
Clifford L.B. Hubbard.

The Domestic Dog, 1957.
Brian Vesey Fitzgerald.

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